Doing the best I can, says Hazel of life with Alzheimer's

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She calls it the "big A", an uphill battle she will never win, but 2 years on Hazel Hawke is living with Alzheimer's disease as best she can. It is all she do, she says.

Her once excellent memory is fading, robbing the social campaigner and former prime minister's wife of the independent, fast-paced life she was accustomed to. She misses the reliability of her mind, but says she does not feel at all disabled.

"I do my own shopping, and cooking. I've not burnt the house down. I do the cleaning," she says in today's edition of The Bulletin.

One of the worst things about the disease which, despite medication, has progressed, is that her family has insisted she no longer drive. Her children live next door to her and keep a close eye on her, without running her life.

"I don't feel confined or robbed," she says. "Every day I make sure that I get up and have a shower first, and then I walk up to the local shops and have a coffee with somebody else, and do a bit of shopping, and come home ..."

Mrs Hawke, 74, went public with her struggle with the brain-wasting disease on the ABC's Australian Story last November because she wanted to tackle the stigma associated with the illness.

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"Because Alzheimer's historically is ... kind of shameful, it's embarrassing, you're losing your marbles, and I thought it was important to say it," she says. "Ridicule is terribly hurtful to the sufferer, and it doesn't serve any purpose." She has since kept very quiet.